GDPR – The latest final word in Data Protection and Privacy

EEA citizens have been given the most complete data protection rights in the world by the European Union through the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Compliance is mandatory and hefty fines and penalties are levied on defaulting organizations. GDPR opens up a host of business opportunities for organizations willing to change.

The need for GDPR stems from the fact that technology is rapidly changing the Data and information security landscape across the world and more so, due to the uneven data protection regulations among countries. With the democratic ethos in perspective, GDPR aims to give the control of individual data and information to the EEA citizens. EEA citizens will retain the right to access the individual personal data shared with any company, and also the right to delete it, and/or transfer it to new companies. The fluidity with which Data moves in the platform business model of the post Big-data world opens up avenues for businesses to harness the immense potential of Information. However, trust, citizen consent and individual rights assume paramount importance in such a situation.

Personal data is considered as the most important asset by individuals, corporations and nations. Most of the highly ranked companies in the world today deal with handling huge amounts of data. This brings to focus the extreme caution in the way citizens’ data is created, stored, shared, manipulated, archived and protected. GDPR and similar such regulations help nations and corporations to ensure the basic human rights of privacy. Corporate interests always have the concern of the restrictive influence of such privacy regulations. Yet, more than most companies understand that strict security and well defined regulations are nevertheless necessary for realizing the full potential of personal data asset.

The penal clauses in GDPR are not just a punitive measures for the defaulting companies. They are intelligently devised at improving data governance, heighten trust, make citizens more aware in sharing their personal data, make consent understandable and enable entirely new classes of services.

The immediate effects of implementing GDPR is already there to witness. The latest boost in the security and e-identity sector is but an example of the vast changes yet to come. Personal Information Management Systems (PIMS) is an entirely new class of services made possible by the GDPR. Technologies that provide citizens a singular and holistic view of their agreements and acceptance given to share their data with multiple service providers and corporations enable PIMS. Through PIMS, individuals can give consent, delete data and transfer data. PIMS also helps individuals to subscribe to new services in a secure way protected by GDPR, while corporates can utilize the same platform to reach out to new customers and acquire their data in a mutually beneficial way. The future will be bright for technologies that help in data aggregation, cognitivive technologies and information driven services, such as analytics, pervasive computing etc

GDPR helps corporations in not only avoiding data privacy pit falls and help individuals to free themselves of becoming unwitting co-conspirators of the breach of their own personal data, but also in providing business opportunities for corporations to become highly intelligent in investing data driven services. The by-product of this would superior and secure services for individuals who are not just deemed as consumers any more by the service providers, but also are seen as protected citizens. At the crux of GDPR is the one truly remarkable fact that has been wilfully or otherwise neglected by governments corporations until now – that the individual must be the one who controls what actually happens with his or her data.